Worth A Read At Christmas Length 272 Quick Review Set in Nantucket at Christmas time; a young shop owner struggles between love, community, and career.
Reading Let It Snow by Nancy Thayer on my alma mater’s [Cornell College] campus. | Sweater | Jeans | Boots | Hat | Scarf |The reason I like Let It Snow by Nancy Thayer is because it’s not trying to be anything other than a love story. So many Christmas stories are love stories masquerading as female empowerment or something like that, and I hate the way they are done. They make the woman a strong independent woman in a city without an interest in love, but then she goes home/has to go to a small town/is stranded in the country when her life is turned upside down, realizing she has fallen in love with a man and small town life. Thayer doesn’t try to do that, she comes right out and says what it is. Christina is an independent business woman living in Nantucket and, “She had always wanted to marry and have children and it broke her heart to know that she hadn’t given her parents grandchildren before they died.”
Thayer writes a sweet story about finding love and fighting for what you believe in. She does make me want to visit Nantucket someday because it sounds lovely. Overall, it’s a nice story for Christmas, but it’s not a fabulous book. I don’t find the child, Wink, in the story very realistic. I have spent a lot of time around a lot of different children, and I don’t think Wink would act the way she does in the beginning of the book; she does get more believable later in the story. I also don’t love the fact Let It Snow makes an unmarried woman is old. As a woman very near thirty, this is bullshit. The romanticism is a bit much even for a love story.
Thayer has a very straightforward writing style, which makes the narrative quick and easy to read. There are a few grammatical errors. Pronouns should be used more often because Christina is used far too much, and it is incredibly repetitive.
Let It Snow would be a great book to curl up and read over Christmas break. It is very Christmassy and cute. An easy read for all ages.
Memorable Quotes “Sometimes you’re so depressed you’ll do anything to make yourself feel worse.”
Sometimes I’m real basic. I like to support local coffee shops as much as possible, but you know, Starbucks calls. And it’s hard to pass up a photo opportunity with their cute Christmas/holiday cups!
My best friend, Alex, worked at Starbucks in college. He would always wake me up in the morning with a caramel apple spice or something else delicious he made up for me. It’s hard not to love free! When I miss him, I still head to Starbucks for a caramel apple spice.
They are everywhere, and you always know what you’re getting. As a traveler, Starbucks is nice because it feels familiar on the other side of the world or in an airport.
Rewards programs get me every time. Alex made me get a reward program almost nine years ago. I’ve been a gold member every since. I get tons of free coffee, and now that they updated the program, I can buy merchandise with my stars!!! (My wallet was stolen four years ago, and I’m still pissed my gold card was stolen. So much ANGER.)
I have one 137 steps from my front door. A gate opens up from my apartment complex into a Starbucks parking lot. Convenience is sometimes key. It’s hard to compete with a minute away. I’m doing a service to the earth by not using gas, bringing my own cup, and taking my dog for a walk.
Puppuccinos are Beau’s favorite thing. She will get mad and sassy if I come home with a Starbucks cup or a green straw and no puppuccino for her. Yes she can tell the difference. I have checked.
I like being able to scan my phone and pay with the app. It’s convenient. I can grab a coffee while out on a walk with Beau even though I leave my wallet. I’m responsible, so this never happens, except all the time.
I can send Starbucks gift cards to my best friend as a treat, when she has something to celebrate, or she’s having a lousy day through the app. It’s easy to make a small gesture. Or for a last minute birthday/Christmas/whatever present if you forget.
They treat their employees well. Alex loved his time at Starbucks, and we’re still friends with lots of his coworkers. Some still work there because it’s a good job. I like supporting businesses which treat their employees well.
Christmas cups are selling point for me. I love the holiday season. I’m not religious, but Christmas is my jam. They get behind it with their red cups and holiday merchandise. Yay!!!
No matter where you are in the world, you know what you’re going to get. Starbucks makes sure everything is cohesive. A vanilla latte will taste the same in Iowa as it does in London or Munich. I know because I have product tested in those locations.
They’re nice. Starbucks takes customer experience seriously. I have met some of the nicest people behind their counters. No snarky baristas there. Or if they’re snarky, it’s because they’re being funny and playing off my snarkiness.
bisous und обьятий, RaeAnna
I’m also including a bunch of Christmas pajamas that I love and wear
this time of year… and all year round because I’m weird.
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French Quarter Fiction is one of those anthologies: it has something for everyone. (Unless you hate short stories, then it doesn’t have anything for you.) As much as I love reading anthologies, I hate reviewing them because there is too much to say. It’s impossible to focus on style because it changes from story to story with the authors. No one wants to read a detailed literary analysis of every short story in an anthology; most people don’t want to read a literary analysis ever. The messages and themes and character development and everything else shifts just as much. Instead, I like to focus on the fact it’s done well or not.
New Orleans is a vibrant and unique city; I don’t think one story or one author has been able to capture the essence of this iconic place. It means different things to different people. The one thing it does for everyone is evoke feeling; whether they love it or hate it, there are emotions associated with New Orleans. In my opinion, an anthology does a better job at capturing the spirit of the French Quarter because there is a spirit in those streets.
Joshua Clark does an excellent job choosing stories by well known and highly acclaimed authors to lesser known. The stories range from heart breaking to hilarious.
The French Quarter and alcohol are synonymous. You can walk around with a drink in your hand in the Quarter. You should because everyone does. New Orleans wouldn’t be New Orleans without alcohol being a part of the story. The stories begin with a map so you can orient yourself. French Quarter Fiction is divided up into sections. Each section is started with an iconic drink name, the history, and a recipe. I don’t drink, but you should read this with a drink in your hand. It won’t make it better because it’s already good, but it will give you an authentic New Orleans experience from your couch.
I seriously suggest picking up French Quarter Fiction if you love New Orleans or have an interest in the city.
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Title: French Quarter Fiction Edited By: Joshua Clark Publisher: Fall River Press (Light of New Orleans Publishing, LLC) Copyright: 2010 ISBN: 9781435123953
Worth A Read Yes: Entertaining and Honest Length 240 Quick Review Mat Best was a Ranger before contracting and becoming known for his youTube channel, tshirt/whiskey/coffee companies, oh, and he made a movie. He’s entertaining as hell in his book Thank You For My Service.
As military adjacent, I’m interested in military nonfiction and memoirs, but as a critic I’m always wary because I’ve read some racist bulshit masquerading as war memoirs. Mat Best does a better-than-most job at balancing the realities of war with humanity in Thank You For My Service.
Best was a Ranger in the 75th Ranger Regiment for five active military deployments before working and deploying multiple times as a private contractor. While working as a contractor, he created a youTube channel capitalizing on his creative side to document his time, opinions, and experiences as a member of the military. The channel lead to a partnership, which created a tshirt company, whiskey company, production company, a movie, and a coffee company. He’s kind of a jack of all trades, it seems.
The military is a completely different way of life. It’s hard to understand if you’re not in it. Even as a milso, it’s not my way of life, but I am more familiar with it than others. If you’re not into a morbid sense of humor, don’t read Thank You For My Service because that’s a huge part of the narrative and the military. Jokes and rude humor are essential. To be honest, the book would be super weird if he didn’t include dark jokes. Best redacts certain words, even whole sections of text, to maintain anonymity and secrecy. This underpins the fact he had a dangerous job, and even though he’s cracking jokes, people’s lives are at risk every moment of every day.
I decided to pose with Thank You For My Service by Mat Best at the Aviation Memorial on MCAS New River in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
War is war. People killing people. War memoirs tend to dehumanize the enemy in a plethora of ways. It’s part of the job, and it would be hard not to when you see your friends and colleagues dying. Best doesn’t sugar coat the feelings he had in theater, but he also makes sure the reader knows on the other side of his gun are people. The fact he didn’t use racial slurs impressed me. He does er on the side of “kill the enemy,” but that was literally his job.
Best is confident, funny, and smart. He writes about his experiences leading up to enlisting, deployments, Ranger school, loss, getting out, private security, joining and being a private contractor, and figuring out his life. He doesn’t shy away from discussing what he went through getting out of the military. Being in his early twenties but feeling disconnected from his peers. So many military guys feel this way when they get out after their first enlistment.
He and I, I am sure, have a lot of differing opinions, but he’s also a person I would have a ton of fun grabbing coffee with or joking over a bonfire. Throughout Thank You For My Service he emphasizes the sense of community he had in the military. It’s true, whether you’re in or military adjacent, when you meet someone who is military, you have something to talk about or bond over.
Memorable Quotes| “Thinking you’re going to die and wanting to die are totally different things. I didn’t have a death wish. It’s just that, in my experience, the more you deploy and face the dark realities that exist in life, the more comfortable you become with the idea of death.” “…being immersed in Ranger culture for four straight years had affected how I saw the world and, more to the point, how the world saw me.”
Worth A Read Absolutely Length 384 Quick Review Emily Nussbaum is a Pulitzer Prize winning critic. I’ve heard of her in passing, but I fell in love with her in I Like to Watch, a collection of new and published essays.
I don’t read a lot of critiques because I don’t like to be influenced one way or the other, but maybe I should start reading Emily Nussbaum’s critiques because, damn, she’s spot on. After reading I Like to Watch, I am officially an Emily Nussbaum fan.
TV is seen, by many, as a waste of time. As the work-from-home, freelancer, hermit, stay-at-home dog mom type, I’m a huge fan of TV. Other than Beau, television is my constant companion. I don’t always broadcast my love of TV, but I have always defended shows I find smart and compelling, which others tend to throw away as “girly.” Idiots. I might like Nussbaum because she bolstered my opinions, but she’s very smart and has been published in a lot of the best publications. I have watched to completion almost every show reviewed and mentioned in I Like to Watch, so maybe I need to be more productive, or maybe I should go into TV criticism… But she has a Pulitzer, and I have a blog.
Nussbaum was on her way to a doctorate when her future changed during an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned her into a TV critic.
Nussbaum is an amazing writer with deep insights, a sense of humor, and a complete lack of herd mentality. Her opening and closing sentences to her essays are amazing. I aspire to those kinds of clinchers. Though I Like to Watch focuses on TV, Nussbaum dives into more like the Me Too movement, Weinstein, and the fall out. Television is more than just mindless entertainment. It is a way to show people other ways of life, open minds, sway opinions, and dive into the nitty gritty. There has been a decent amount of uproar about rape depictions on TV, but representing dark and gruesome is not a bad thing, “Well drawn characters …. may be rape survivors, but that’s not where their stories stop. They’re more than their worst days.”
I live in this world as a woman. There are some great parts about being a lady, but there are a ton of downsides. I am not represented in the media to my fullest complexity, and it is far worse for people and women of color. I have known this for awhile, but there are shows I couldn’t totally pinpoint why I didn’t like them until I read I Like to Watch. In several highly underrated shows, Nussbaum agreed with the things I’ve been saying for, well, since I saw the shows. Shows like True Detective and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel were fun but lacking in my opinion because, as Nussbaum explains, they completely lack female characters of any depth or humor or qualities making women complex entities. I liked them, but they weren’t great. I guess I like my shows to have men and women with personalities. Shows poo-pooed by friends, critics, and randos like Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are great. They are smart and funny but belittled because they’re shows for women. Fuck the patriarchy. I binged Sex and the City last year because I’d never had access to HBO, and all I’d ever heard was how girly it was. I was hooked because it showed flawed, complex women working at friendship, relationships, and their goals with really great clothes and shoes, “High-feminine instead of fetishistically masculine, glittery rather than gritty, and daring in its conception of character, Sex and the City was a brilliant, and, in certain ways, radical show.”
By the way, I fucking loved Nanette. I watched it the day it came out. Hannah Gadsby is a delight. It is a special I keep thinking about and recommending to anyone who has an interest in comedy, art history, feminism, LGBTQIA rights, or existing on this planet.
This is not a collection of glowing critiques, but it is an honest collection. There are good, pans, and some in between. I Like to Watchis an array of previously published and new essays from Nussbaum’s career as a critic. I seriously enjoyed this one, and I keep recommending it to people.
Memorable Quotes “It was elitist screed, nostalgic for an America that never really existed…” “Criticism isn’t memoir, but it’s certainly personal, so you dan consider these essays to be a portrait of me struggling to change my mind.” “Jokes were a superior way to tell the truth – and that meant freedom for everyone.” “…there’s a risk to Schumer’s rise: When you’re put on a pedestal, the whole world gets to upskirt you.” “Bigotry is resilient, because rejecting it often means rejecting your own family.”
Worth A Read YES Length 301 Quick Review Irene Redfield is a proud black woman living in the 1920s. She runs into a childhood friend, who no longer identifies as black.
Some books stay with you long after you read them; Passingby Nella Larsen is one of those books. There’s really nothing I dislike about this book. Small and powerful, this 1920s novel holds up ninety years later.
Irene Redfield and Clare Bellew grew up in the same neighborhood in Chicago before losing touch. They are both black women living in the 1920s with families when they meet again in a whites only establishment. The difference is: Irene is living her life as a black woman, but Clare is passing in the world as a white woman. The novel continues filled with familial, women’s, cultural, racial issues and more. There is never a dull moment in Irene’s life or mental state.
Passingis told in three parts from Irene’s perspective. Irene is smart, independent, and empathetic but also a product of her time and culture. There is so much emotional variance and abundance throughout the work. Irene is a black woman living in a white world but far more happy in her oppressed circumstances than Clare, who is living as a white woman in a white world with the constant fear of being exposed and a hunger for a community with a shared background. Larsen has so much insight into the human psyche surpassing yet encompassing race.
Nella Larsen is a beloved author of the Harlem Renaissance. Passingis one of her most well-known works published in 1929. A lot of things have changed in ninety years, but we definitely do not live in a post racial world. So many things ring true in this novel. The conversations held in white living rooms feel like something my racist/bigoted family members might say. Questions along the lines of “Oh! And your husband, is he – is he – er – dark, too?” are still uttered by people trying to be tactful but falling absolutely short.
Larsen’s use of language and punctuation is incredible. It’s one of those books you want to sit with letting the words roll through your mind reveling in the meaning and feeling of it all. Authors often use punctuation without thinking about it or having fun with it, but Passinghas fun with punctuation using it to make points “And the eyes were magnificent! dark, sometimes absolutely black lashes.” I love her usage of commas; they help bring the reader into the angry, confused psyche of Irene
I have so many things to say about Passing. The ending is incredible. The entire book is an incredible piece of literature. I can see why Modern Library included it in its inaugural Torchbearers series.
Memorable Quotes “Nevertheless, Irene felt, in turn, anger, scorn, and fear slide over her.” “Why, simply because of Clare Kendry, who had exposed her to such torment, had she failed to take up the defence of the race to which she belonged?” “”It’s easy for a Negro to ‘pass’ for white. But I don’t think it would be so simple for a white person to ‘pass’ for coloured.””
